


its complicated

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [9]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Best Friends, Communication Failure, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Matt is an emotionally stunted human being and foggy is responsible, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 16:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14937569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “I’m not in love with my best friend,” Red defended, “I am royally, and probably perpetually, cursed to die sad and alone.”Spidey read this for what it actually was and went straight for the jugular.“So are you just never gonna tell him or what?”(Wade teaches Peter about the complexities of super-people relationships. Matt and Foggy are his case study.)





	its complicated

**Author's Note:**

> this expands on what happened in the last few paragraphs of Lighting Up Brimstone. You don't really need to read that one to get this one, but it might help set the stage.

Red had a fucking crush. He was sweet on some bitch. He was picking the petals off daisies and filling notebooks with someone else’s name.

It was the best thing ever.

Naturally, Wade started guessing. It wasn’t Karen Page. It wasn’t Becky, Red’s secretary. It wasn’t Frank Castle (that one got him damn near suffocated with his own bed clothes). It wasn’t Jessica Jones. Nor Jones’s associate. It wasn’t anyone from his gym or his apartment building.

At this point, he could only judge the answers to his questions by the amount of anguish Red seemed to be in, in response.

Red threw on his clothes and fucked off while telling Wade to do the same.

Wade would not be deterred. He cornered Spidey because he needed a bigger brain.

“Old people get crushes?”

An unexpected error, Wade had forgotten that to teenagers, adults were an exotic and impenetrable species. He schooled Spidey in this and the definition of ‘old’ and then reminded him of his purpose.

“Maybe it’s one of his lawyer people?” Spidey guessed like the brilliant little space cadet he was.

“I will find them,” Wade promised. Spidey squinted at him.

“Didn’t you just lecture me on privacy?”

“All is fair in love and war, baby boy.”

 

 

Ohohoho. It was his best friend. Red was in love with his best friend, a lawyer.

This was some Legally Blonde shit, and it was fucking incredible.

On the other hand, it was just fucking tragic.

“That sucks,” Spidey proclaimed through tacos. “I mean, I haven’t been there, but that actually sucks. How did you find out?”

Wade found out because Red had spent the evening before last pretending like he wasn’t about to have a full-blown meltdown and was therefore weak and ripe for the picking. Wade dragged him away from a handful of guys who really didn’t deserve that much of Red’s energy and forced him to help him set up for one of his own upcoming schemes. It required stuffing a whole lot of feathers into a whole lot of pillows.

Red had some aggression to work out and a minor allergy to feathers; it gave him an excuse to sniff all over everything and maybe get a little teary, too. Shit in the air and all that.

“So, how’d you meet?” Wade agitated. Red growled at him and ignored him. Wade decided to wait him out. It worked like a charm. After three pillows Red scratched at his cheeks and cracked like an egg.

“He fucking hates Daredevil.”

Oh. See, now, that was a problem.

“Fucking hates him. Called him the bane of his existence and his own personal Judas the other day.”

Holy fucking shit. Wade might have fucked up on a greater scale than he’d imagined.

“And I told him, I _told him_ that we’re the same person, but he doesn’t believe me.”

“Uh.”

“He doesn’t fucking believe me. He wants me to go have my head checked out. He says it’s a choice. He says he can’t trust me.” Red’s voice cracked on the ‘can’t.’

Oh, Jesus Christ, Red, why you always gotta go and make it serious.

“But you--?” Wade drew a heart in the air with his fingers, then remembered Red couldn’t see it.

He seemed to get the gist of it anyways. He stopped stuffing pillows and flopped forward hard into his collection and groaned pitifully. Wade stuffed a few more handfuls of feathers into his own collection while he thought of how to reroute this conversation.

“Why?” he asked. Red wheezed and scrambled out of his pillows to sneeze repeatedly.

“Why what?” he sniffed irritably.

“Why do you want this guy’s dick so bad?” There you go, Wilson. Make it about sex; that’s how you get shit done.

“Because he’s smart and he’s funny and he’s brave and he’s kind and he takes care of me and he lets me fuss over him.” 

“Dude.” Totally not what he was going for.

“I _know._ ”

“Well, as long as you know.”

Red had recovered enough from his sneezing to re-drop himself into the pillows to sulk.

They stuffed pillows in silence.

 

 

“Do old people confess to their crushes?” Spidey asked a few days after they’d started gossiping. Red was going to town on the head of their main target, so the other two had sped off to cut off the underlings. Spidey was getting quick with that web of his, or was desperate for new information, and so had subdued both assholes without letting Wade get anything in edgewise. He’d even called the police.

Wade gave the question some serious thought. He had to do this with Spidey because the kid took his word for gospel sometimes. Confessing? Ehn. Sort of. It depended on the people in question and the situation at hand. Many people, he figured, already knew if they were into each other and just confirmed each other’s inklings. The super mature more declared than confessed. The rest of them, who operated largely as thirteen-year-olds in fast shrinking and expanding humanoid shells, probably did confess in some way or another.

He wasn’t quite sure where Red and his situation fell in these categories. He still hadn’t been privy to Red the lawyer. He only knew Red in the mask and in bed.

“Yeah, old people confess. I don’t know if this is Red’s problem, though.”

Spidey cocked his head.

“Why wouldn’t it be his problem?”

“Pretty sure Red’s friend already suspects something is up. It sounds like he’s not into Daredevil.”

“Oh, shit.”

Spidey looked super self-conscious. Struck a nerve, did we, kiddo?

“How do you, uh, get around that?”

Oh, you sweet summer child.

“You don’t,” Wade told him seriously. “I mean, you could hide it for the rest of your life, but like, I can’t actually think of anyone that’s worked out well for. And why would you want to, anyways? The fuck is the point of someone only accepting you for half of who you are?”

Spidey’s body language was subtle here. He looked down and kind of flexed his hands while he thought. Wade was proud to have inspired this reaction. Deadpool, murderer, assassin, angel of love and fountain of knowledge. Tap of insight. Deceptive puddle of chaos and regret.

“So, if you like a girl, you have to tell her about this stuff?” Spidey clarified.

“If you like _anyone_ ,” Wade corrected gently, “They have a right to know what they’re getting into.”

This was amazing. Spidey had a crush, too.

“What happens if you don’t?” Spidey asked. “Or, I mean, what happens if you do?”

“Well, it can go a lot of ways. You might end up with a Red situation, ie. you’re unspeakably miserable. Or you might end up with a me situation, wherein the love of your life gets murdered in front of your face while you’re helpless to stop it.”

Spidey’s face told him that this might have been overshare.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

“It’s kind of a slippery slope, kiddo,” Wade assured him.

 

 

Red dragged the team together and announced that they were going to break into a building full of stolen animals from the SPCA.

Wade screamed internally and externally because he’d always wanted to be in Legally Blonde.

“Red, this is your turning point,” he babbled, “This is when you learn that you have what it takes to be a real lawyer.”

Red gave him a curious look.

“Uh. I am a lawyer?”

“No. You’ve gotta save Paulette’s dog first.”

“Wade, I passed the bar ages ago.”

“And then you’ve gotta be sexually assaulted at your internship.”

“I mean, I’ve already done that too?”

Wade grabbed his face in both hands.

“You can do this, Elle.”

“Okay?” Red squeaked, then squirmed out of his hold. Spidey was dying with laughter because _someone_ appreciated him.

It wasn’t quite Legally Blonde; Elle didn’t have to choke a guy out to keep him from calling all his science buddies to come hide the evidence of their non-FDA approved animal testing scheme. But you know what, Red deserved a little credit; he’d really gotten creative with this one, so Wade was going to let him continue on in the role.

“Double D, are you still in love with your best friend?” Spidey asked, having been rewarded with ice cream for his own role as Snow White to all domesticated pets and getting them out of the rapidly burning warehouse with stunning calmness and efficiency.

Red choked on his hippie vegan sorbet and then proceeded to reenact the scene with the chokehold on Wade.

Oscar-worthy, truly.

“I’m _not_ in love with my best friend,” Red defended, “I am royally, and probably perpetually, cursed to die sad and alone.”

Spidey read this for what it actually was and went straight for the jugular.

“So are you just never gonna tell him or what?”

Red put down his vegan hippie shit to slide down in despair and stretch out miserably all over the roof.

“I _did_ tell him,” he whined. “And he told me he wasn’t emotionally available to someone with a death wish.”

Damn, Red’s best friend, good for you for being a real adult. He was setting a great example for Spidey.

“And you said?” Spidey pressed. Red covered his face with his hands.

“I didn’t say anything because—”

“You were sobbing?” Wade interrupted.

“I was sobbing,” Red conceded, “And he’s totally right and deserves someone so much better than me. Fuck.”

Wade was gonna go ahead and diagnose this one with self-loathing.

“Did you tell him you don’t have a death wish?” Spidey asked with his plastic spoon in his mouth. Kid was vicious, fuck. Wade made a mental note to add interrogation skills to his file at home.

“I can’t lie to F—I can’t lie to him. He knows me too well. We were roommates for all of grad school.”

Wade screamed internally because this was just getting better and better. Spidey was staring with wide eyes.

“And you were _roomates_?” he whispered.

 “Did you guys fool around?” Wade asked, because someone needed to be asking the important questions around here and Red was miserable enough to be forthcoming with information for once. Red gave up on the melted sorbet.

“We did, I think? I don’t remember, I was so fucking drunk. I mean, to this day, I don’t know how I survived that night. I was well into alcohol poisoning territory.”

Spidey was learning so much. Wade hoped this would serve as a lesson to him for his future college experience.

“Does he love you back?” Spidey asked innocently.

Red put his head in his hands and took a breath to collect himself.

“He does. But like,” he made a frustrated sound and accompanied it with head grabbing, “He says that he loves me, and he wants a serious relationship, but he can’t live with the chance of me dying every time I go out. But the last time I stopped doing this,” he gestured widely to indicate, “I lost my fucking mind. I couldn’t get out of bed, it made everything so. Much. Worse. And he gets that, he watched it. But still, we can’t get past it and everything is awful and I want to not talk about it anymore.”

There wasn’t too much to say to that.

But of course, there was Spidey, who was still struggling with the whole boundaries thing.

“Why don’t you tell him that?”

“Did I stutter, kid?”

“I mean a little—”

“Okay,” Wade interrupted before things got ugly, “Red, your life is shit. But I’m glad it’s shit with us. I’m sure your boo will come around eventually. It sounds like he’s a good egg.”

Red snapped his head up to glare at him furiously.

“The best egg.”

Wade raised an eyebrow.

“Right.”

“God, I’m fucked.”

“No really, you are.”

 

 

Red disappeared for a while just in time for Spidey to break a collarbone in a completely random, for once un-superhero related, car accident. He was super bummed about it and spent his time at home pouting and sending Wade memes he didn’t understand.

He considered himself pretty up to date with the internet, but even he had to concede that teenagers were far beyond him. Spidey had to stay home longer than usual because his healing factor was extremely suspicious. This meant the child was bored as fuck, constantly.

As such, Wade was preoccupied with researching memes for long enough that it took him by surprise when Red crawled into his window and said they should fuck.

It turned out to be the last fuck, because Red sat in his lap and proceeded to gush all about how his bff had had a change of heart. Red, apparently, had driven the point home by having an allergic reaction to some damn thing and his bff had to go through a fuckload of red tape to see him in the hospital. His bff had made a crack about how they might as well get married so that when Red inevitably died young, he’d get his due respect as a spouse and widower.

Wade didn’t think that this was exactly complimentary, but he kept his mouth shut because Red said that his bff always joked about big decisions before committing to them.

He wanted their wedding to be at his church.

He wanted peonies and jasmine at the reception.

He wanted Frank Castle barred from the city for the entire month the ceremony would take place.

He got a text from the man of the hour which said simply ‘hey, can we talk?’ and leapt out of Wade’s lap to start yanking on clothes haphazardly. He said he had to go home to make himself presentable. He made Wade promise him that there were no hickeys on his body, and then he fucked off in the same whirlwind he’d arrived in.

Spidey sent Wade a video of a girl hurling an empty soda can into a crowd, then explained that he fully intended to adapt this to his web slinging.

There was a lot happening. Wade decided to take a nap.

 


End file.
